 |
For a
World |
Mahatma
Gandhi |
Site
map Russian Chinese Esperanto German/Deutsch |
"My particular respect to your
foundation and its work in the spirit of Gandhi, whose thoughts and deeds are of burning topicality." Richard von Weizsäcker (President of Fed. Rep. of Germany 1984-1994) more |
|
Last update: Tuesday - April 11, 2006 - 12:03 CET --- Mahatma Gandhi News Digest Archive
Activist against apartheid IndianSt. Louis Post-Dispatch - USA - by Cynthia Billhartz Gregorian Ahmed Kathrada was 8 when he was sent off to a school more than 100 miles away. He didn't like it one bit, but segregation was the law of the land, and the nearest school for Indian South Africans was in Johannesburg. For Kathrada, now affectionately and internationally known as Kathy, it was the first time he'd experienced the ugliness of apartheid. His move to the big city, however, would eventually lead him to lifelong political activism, which would be crucial to the end of apartheid in South Africa. It also would land him in prison alongside Nelson Mandela and other opposition leaders for 26 years, 18 of them in the brutal Pollsmoor Prison on Robben Island off Cape Town. Kathrada was released in 1989 and went on to serve in South Africa's Parliament and as chairman of the Robben Island Council. He is in St. Louis this week to talk about his experiences and promote "Ahmed Kathrada: Memoirs." In 1929, Kathrada was born to an Indian shopkeeper and his wife in the rural town of Schweizer-Reneke in northwestern South Africa. A sizable Indian migration to South Africa occurred in the late 19th century as a result of the expansion of the British Empire. In fact, Mahatma Gandhi lived in South Africa for more than 20 years where he fought for the rights of Indians there. Over the years, Kathrada has found many people surprised that Indians were oppressed under apartheid. "Even in South Africa, we still find that in parts of the country, particularly among the younger generation," Kathrada said by phone from East Lansing, Mich. "You had the separation of the different racial groups through the Group Areas Act under the pro-Nazi regime that came into power in 1948. So you had generations of young people, blacks and Indians, living in different group areas with stereotypes about one another. You did find young black people who thought Indians had the same rights as white people." In his memoir, Kathrada describes the conflicts and contradictions inherent in apartheid. Though exploited themselves, Indian South Africans often in turn exploited blacks. He also recalls growing up around poor whites who were both kind and cordial to his family but supported the National Party's racist laws. He believes that the small size of rural towns fostered more personal contact among residents. In addition, he said, most shops in Schweizer-Reneke were run by Indians like his father, and the poor, white locals were forced to do business with the Indians. "In that sense, the interaction becomes smoother," he said. "But there was ignorance. They didn't know that Indians could not vote. They would come into the store and ask, 'Who are you going to vote for?'" While living in Johannesburg, two events turned Kathrada toward activism: an introduction to Dr. Yusuf Dadoo, and joining the Young Communist League. "One of the similarities between my childhood years and the Communist League was that it, too, consisted of white, black and Indian children together," Kathrada said. "It was very similar to home, and I felt very comfortable there. That's how political consciousness gradually entered my life." Dadoo had returned from studying abroad — there were no universities for blacks or Indians in South Africa at the time — and within a few years had taken a leadership role with the Indian Congress party, helping to change that group. "The (new) policy was not to work in isolation and demand rights for Indian people only but to demand equality for everyone, to work in unity with other oppressed people," Kathrada said. Dadoo also promoted nonviolent resistance, started in 1906 by Gandhi before he left South Africa. In his memoir, Kathrada writes of the evolution of the opposition to apartheid from the 1940s. He describes in detail passive resistance movements that resulted in thousands of blacks and Indians going to prison and the government's ever harsher legislation to thwart their efforts. Before being sentenced to life in prison in 1964, Kathrada had been jailed several times and barred from taking part in the activities of 39 organizations, making it impossible for him to take part in politics. Eventually, he was put under house arrest for 13 hours a day. When political activity became impossible, the African National Congress formed an armed wing that recruited people to plant bombs in government buildings after hours to avoid harming anyone, Kathrada said. The bombings eventually led to the arrest of Kathrada and Mandela, and the Rivonia trial from which they were sentenced to life in prison. Kathrada and the other political prisoners weren't allowed newspapers, so they would "beg, borrow, steal, bribe and blackmail" to get news from the outside, he said. Some news came from guards, some from the criminal inmates who didn't have the same restrictions. "At first, they (the criminal prisoners) were placed among us to harass and spy, but eventually it didn't work," Kathrada said. "We politicized them and taught them they may be prisoners, but even prisoners had human rights." International support, including sanctions by other countries, bolstered their spirits and kept alive hope among the political prisoners, he said. Besides, he said, prison is a state of mind. "When we were engaged in what got us to prison, we knew the least of our problems would be prison," Kathrada said. "The laws provided for the death penalty. Many of our colleagues were executed or assassinated. We were safe" in Robben Island. Kathrada now is often called on to give tours of Robben Island and the claustrophobic cells in which he, Mandela and their colleagues were confined. "It's become routine," he said. "My very first visit after I was released was with a French religious group. It was the very first time I saw myself in that cell, and it was traumatic. By that time, I was used to space. Suddenly faced with that little cell, I started wondering how I spent 18 years of life in that little cell." `NBA' and Physics of Power Deccan Herald - India (About the book The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire by Arundhati Roy, Non-fiction, Pages 424, price Rs 295) The Narmada Bachao Andolan is not fighting just big dams. It is fighting for the survival of India's greatest gift to the world: non-violent resistance. "You could call it the Ahimsa Bachao Andolan or the Save Non-violence Movement," says Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy in her book, 'An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire'. In the opening essay 'Ahimsa', the author captures the grit of the NBA movement, a movement that she has been closely associated with. About the movement, she says "...It is demanding more modernity , not less and more democracy not less." The author argues that the world over, non-violent movements are being crushed and broken. If we do not respect them, by default we privilege those who turn to violent means..." Placing it in a pan-Indian context Roy says "...What is happening in Kashmir, the northeast and Andhra Pradesh is all a part of this process." The book is a collection of speeches and essays that in Roy's own words "explore the relationships between power and the powerlessness and the circular conflict that they are engaged in." "....My writing is not really about nations and histories, it's about power... I tell it not as an ideologue who wants to pit one absolutist ideology against another, but as a storyteller who wants to share her way of seeing ... My writing is not about nations and histories, it's about power. About the paranoia and ruthlessness of power. About the physics of power, Roy says about her 14 essays written between June 2002 and Nov 2004. This 'physics' is what she brands the 'Empire' - largely a baritone against the American propaganda - political, economic and the one carried out through its media. "There isn't a country on God's earth that is not caught in the cross-hairs of the American cruise missile and the IMF cheque book." In 'Come September' Roy juxtaposes the remorse that grips nations across the globe on the fateful day of September 11, not in sympathy for the US but due to excesses of the regime that changed the course of history of nations for the worse. On September 11, 1973 General Pinochet, toppled the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende with the help of the CIA. In 1922 the British government proclaimed a mandate in Palestine, re-inforcing the Balfour Declaration of 1917. In 1990, George Bush Senior announced his decision to go to war against Iraq, the book says. In 'Peace is War ' Roy talks about on this complex mess of cables that connect power to money and the supposedly neutral, free press. The books says that economic cartels manipulate news aimed at their own survival in the context of "sponsored news " and "embedded journalism." She says that the new media is nothing more than "an elaborate board room bulletin that reports and analyses the concerns of the powerful people." She also talks about crisis reportage as a "blood sport" which governments "wait-out" and TV channels manufacture "in consumable, spectator friendly formats." In 'Where Saints go Marching' Roy talks about the commodification of icons of non-violence- Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and wonders who has inherited their mantle. "...Our strategy should not only be to confront the Empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of Oxygen .To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness - and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones that we are brainwashed to believe. " (About the book The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire by Arundhati Roy, Non-fiction, Pages 424, price Rs 295) Indian eco-warrior's hunger strike ignites controversy over massive dam Yahoo News - USA NEW DELHI (AFP) - When Indian environmental activist Medha Patkar began a hunger strike on a dirty New Delhi sidewalk, demanding help for villagers displaced by a dam, nobody in India paid much attention. Patkar, known as India's most dogged eco-warrior, had already lost one battle to block construction of the massive Narmada Valley dam project in western India and it was reckoned she was fighting a losing cause. But Indians began to sit up and take notice when Patkar's health began to fail and the 51-year-old was forceably moved by the police from her downtown sidewalk to a hospital intensive care unit. Patkar, who doctors say is in stable condition after beginning her "fast unto death" on March 31, has kept refusing food in hospital, only taking water. The hunger strike by the grey-haired Patkar, dubbed by supporters as "the lady Mahatma Gandhi of our times" after India's pacifist independence leader, has become front-page news. Her fast, a weapon popularised by Mahatma Gandhi in fighting British colonial rule, has succeeded in focusing the spotlight on the dam and the fate of tens of thousands of villagers whose homes and land are being submerged. It has also raised troubling questions about the cost of development for India as its economy booms, raising the living standards of many but leaving millions more by the wayside, commentators say. "The dam campaign has come to symbolise the injustice in India regarding displacement of so many people (for development projects) without adequate resettlement," UN special rapporteur on adequate housing Miloon Kothari said. Patkar has waged a two-decade fight against the project that advocates say will provide water and hydro-electricity to areas in desperate need. She has accepted the clock cannot be turned back on the dam, which is near completion. But she wants the government to abide by a Supreme Court order banning construction to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar, the biggest dam in the complex, until 35,000 villagers are resettled and given cultivable land. "I will continue the fast until I have assurances they will not raise the dam's height," she said before being shifted to hospital. "You can't ignore the voice of the poor in a development process." Workers are racing to raise the dam from 110 meters (360 feet) to 122 meters. Critics say the dambuilders are seeking to present the Supreme Court with a fait accompli when it hears the issue April 17. Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz and two other ministers have travelled to the site to review resettlement efforts. But critics have called their whistle-stop tour a sham and have asked a trio of prominent citizens to make their own independent inspection. Meanwhile, three who went on hunger strike with Patkar have continued and been joined by four more, including a professor and student leader who are lying on the sidewalk amid supporters shouting, "We will not give up the struggle." "This is symbolic of a last battle in a sense ... against what the Indian state is doing which is economic growth, not distribution (of wealth) and development," said Jawaharlal University international relations professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy, who joined the fast. Prominent writers, Bollywood actors, social activists and former premiers have come out in support of the Save the Narmada Movement. "Where are these (displaced) people supposed to go?" said Booker prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy, one of the dam's most vocal opponents. "This is a peaceful movement but if you're non-violent, nobody listens to you." Former prime ministers V.P. Singh and I.K. Gujral have appealed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to freeze construction. "We're simply asking the court order be respected," V.P. Singh told AFP. "Until these people are resettled, the dam height should not be raised." Sixty-year-old farmer Bawa Mahana said the dam had left his family landless and ruined. "Why is the government turning us into beggars in our own land?" he asked, squatting with the pavement protesters. FAIR USE NOTICE This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, human rights, peace, nonviolence, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material. In accordance with international copyright regulations, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
